Dear Friend,
Standing at the podium in the University of Toledo auditorium at the FGC Gathering a few weeks ago, the Reverend Doctor William J. Barber II gripped the lectern in front of him and leveled a quietly piercing look at the nearly one thousand Friends gathered around him. He had just reviewed what he called the heresy of government, the wickedness of people in high places, and the malpractice of theology among faith leaders who have preyed upon the poor, the sick, the old, the disenfranchised. And he had a question for us.
“So what should we do?” he asks gently, looking around the room. And then, reminding us of the historic actions of Friends Levi Coffin and Lucretia Mott to effect change, he called us from our homes and meetinghouses to rise up and join the thousands of others across the country to “speak out from that deep place within,” “to be part of a collective outcry,” to become moral witnesses.”
“It is time,” he emphasized. “It is time.”
Yes. It is. Author of The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement is Overcoming the Politics of Fear, Rev. Barber is also author of Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation. He is the former head of the North Carolina NAACP, founder of the “Moral Mondays” movement, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and has been hailed as the “next Martin Luther King.”
His new book Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing is available for pre-order here from QuakerBooks. It’s a book we can use well over the next two years.
In the Light,
Ellen Michaud
Publications and Distribution Committee of FGC